"Not at all wrong. "
Yeah you are. You accused me of watching the (dumb) 'Aviator' and not seeing 'POTC'. Both accusations are false. You actually seem to know more about 'Aviator' than I so I should probably be asking you these questions.
"Passion is obviously an important film with huge significance for millions of people. "
Popularity isn't the sole criteria for being award-worthy.
"The Aviator is a fluff entertainment starring an actor who is hard to take seriously. Do you really think people care that much about Howard Hughes--enough to surrender three hours of their time, let alone the price of a ticket?"
No argument, although unlike you, I don't even know what actor is in 'Aviator'. From what I've read today, the Academy didn't award it anything major anyways. I'm guessing some people cared, though, given its box office success. Not everyone is interested in watching someone get beaten for 3 hours over & over again. I personally don't go the the theater to get depressed.
Popularity was not what the Passion of the Christ was all about. It was a film brimming with creative inspiration and intelligence. But because it was a film about faith and the theological significance of the sufferings of Jesus, it was shut out of the Academy Awards. I doubt most of the industry's leading lights even bothered to see the film. An implacable wall of hostility instead has opposed this movie. It opposed Gibson long before the film ever started production and was the culmination of a long Hollywood grudge against Christianity itself. It's silly to even try to deny this. It had done all it could to try to keep this film from ever being made.
In fact the industry did more than refuse to finance Gibson's venture. It tried to shut it down by means of threats and bad publicity. And when the film was finished, it would not even distribute it--though the market was obviously out there waiting to be served. In fact, so ideologically hostile has Hollywood's left been to anything Christian, that it has gone out of its way for decades to gratuitously insult and ridicule the Christian faith in film after film after film. And because Gibson defied this taboo, he aroused Hollywood's ire, though the film has broken box office records.
The truth is, The Passion of the Christ is a serious film, a thought-provoking film, a film with superb cinematography, a well-acted film, a beautifully directed film, a unique film, a film that is a smash hit, a film that evokes powerful emotions among countless millions, a film that had proven to be a true phenomenon, in fact--yet it was not even nominated. It lost out to lightweights like Million Dollar Baby and Sideways and The Aviator. Jim Caviezel, whose interpretation was universally praised for his powerful performance, was likewise not even nominated, though no actor in the history of cinema had ever been more convincing in such a difficult role. What does this tell us about Hollywood?